I read this a few days ago on Keri Smith's blog, the Wish Jar: "There's a point where you can give up on winter--when temptation can enter your soul, prying its way in like cold air through the cracks in your cabin--around January sixteenth or so, and this can make you realize that February's coming, and beyond February, March.
See, I don't yet realize that March will be the hardest month. Early February's the coldest, and often the snowiest, but March, strange, silent March, will be the hardest.
The danger in yielding to thoughts of spring--green grass, hikes, bare feet, lakes, fly-fishing, rivers, and sun, hot sun--is that once these thoughts enter your mind, you can't get them out.
Love the winter. Don't betray it. Be loyal.
When the spring gets here, love it too--and then the summer.
But be loyal to the winter, all the way through--all the way, and with sincerity--or you'll find yourself high and dry, longing for a spring that's a long way off, and winter will have abandoned you, and in her place you'll have cabin fever, the worst.
The colder it gets, the more you've got to love it."
~Rick Bass fr. Winter -Notes from Montana
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I don't love winter. Not at all. But I try to... you know "live each season as it passes" and all that. I've actually been doing pretty good... more or less content to be inside by the fire, sewing or knitting or watching a movie.
But yesterday I got this in the mail:
And before I could stop myself I was reading and planning and dreaming about seeds and vegetables and the smell of the soil and the warmth of the sun and the wonderful tired feeling of a day spent working in the garden... and just like that, I was lost to spring. 
But it's too bad that this is what my garden looks like right now! :) So I guess I'll be working on being loyal to winter.. I still have lots of time to practice...
2 comments:
It's the seed catalogs that get you, every time! This post really speaks to me. Once I get that yearning I'm just misrable, though I know that's not fair, not to me or that poor old man winter. Everyone has their fun then want to be done with him.
and then there's that one warm day that just teases you to death and u just cant take it any more. the one day makes the end of winter a living hell!! cause everything seems colder and even though the days are longer (small relief) the sunshine is only a false hope, because its still far to cold to go out side and the snow just will never go away fast enough!
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